Surendranath Dasgupta > Quotes

“Love of God is not a thing which we produce in ourselves by excessive brooding or by self-hypnotism or by any other method. It is a permanent flame, slowly burning in the caverns of all our hearts. […] The basis of all religions is this love of God. For if this love of God were not vital to us, all that the great prophets have been trying to preach would have been unreal and futile. If it were not a real experience which in some sense is shared by us all, an experience which ennobles us and raises us far above the selfish pettinesses of life, no prophet and no religious deed would be able to appeal to our higher natures and establish the claims of religion.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, Hindu Mysticism

“the agency of a creator, who is not however always the starting point, and we find that the theory of evolution is combined with the theory of creation, so that Prajâpati is sometimes spoken of as the creator while at other times the creator is said to have floated in the primeval water as a cosmic golden egg. Eschatology;”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1

“No special emphasis is given in the Upani@sads to the sex-desire or the desire for a son; for, being called kâma, whatever was the desire for a son was the same as the desire for money and the desire for money was the same as any other worldly desire (B@rh. IV. iv. 22), and hence sex-desires stand on the same plane as any other desire. _____________________________________________________________________ [Footnote”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“Dâra Shiko the eldest son of the Emperor Shah Jahan heard of the Upani@sads during his stay in Kashmir in 1640. He invited several Pandits from Benares to Delhi, who undertook the work of translating them into Persian.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“The sacrifice taken as a whole is conceived as Haug notes "to be a kind of machinery in which every piece must tally with the other," the slightest discrepancy in the performance of even a minute ritualistic detail, say in the pouring of the melted butter on the fire, or the proper placing of utensils employed in the sacrifice, or even the misplacing of a mere straw contrary to the injunctions was sufficient to spoil the whole sacrifice with whatsoever earnestness it might be performed. Even if a word was mispronounced the most dreadful results might follow. Thus when Tva@s@t@r performed a sacrifice for the production of a demon who would be able to kill his enemy Indra, owing to the mistaken accent of a single word the object was reversed and the demon produced was killed by Indra. But if the sacrifice could be duly performed down to the minutest detail, there was no power which could arrest or delay the fruition of the object. Thus the objects of a sacrifice were fulfilled not by the grace of the gods, but as a natural result of the sacrifice. The performance of the rituals invariably”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“entailing difficult technical philosophical terms are so different from those of European thought, that they can hardly ever be accurately translated.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“Science debased to the end of spreading death and of enslaving humanity, or to the end of procuring newer and newer sensations, a life spent in the whirlpool of fleeting pleasures, varied, subtle, and new, and in the worship of the almighty dollar is what most of us tend to call progress. We live more for the body than for the soul. Our body is our soul; our body is our highest Brahman.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, Hindu Mysticism

“The conception of the supreme man (Puru@sa) in the @Rg-Veda also supposes that the supreme man pervades the world with only a fourth part of Himself, whereas the remaining three parts transcend to a region beyond.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“THE EARLIER UPANISADS (700 B.C.-600 B.C.) The place of the Upanisads in Vedic literature. Though it is generally held that the Upanisads are usually attached as appendices to the Âranyakas which are again attached to the Brâhmanas, yet it cannot be said that their distinction as separate treatises is always observed. Thus we find in some cases that subjects which we should expect to be discussed in a Brâhmana are introduced into the Âranyakas and the Âranyaka materials are sometimes fused into the great bulk of Upanisad teaching.”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1

“produced was killed by Indra. But if the sacrifice could be duly performed down to the minutest detail, there was no power which could arrest or delay the fruition of the object. Thus the objects of a sacrifice were fulfilled not by the grace of the gods, but as a natural result of the sacrifice. The performance of the rituals invariably produced certain mystic or magical results by virtue of which the object desired ___________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: See S.B.E. XLIII. pp.59,60,400 and XLIV. p.409.] [Footnote 2: See Ibid., XLIV, p. 418.] [Footnote 3: R.V.x.90, Puru@sa Sûkta.] 22 by the sacrificer was fulfilled in due course like the fulfilment of a natural law in the physical world. The sacrifice was believed to have existed from eternity like the Vedas. The creation of the world itself was even regarded as the fruit of a sacrifice performed by the supreme Being. It exists as Haug says "as an invisible thing at all times and is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited." The sacrifice is not offered to a god with a view”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

“it is said that whatever a man desires he wills, and whatever he wills he acts. Thus”
― Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1